


A Less Certain World

by sarah_segretti



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Episode: s06e22 Biogenesis, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Illness, Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-09 12:56:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13481931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarah_segretti/pseuds/sarah_segretti
Summary: Summary: A fragile and frightened Mulder, traumatized by the events of "Biogenesis," turns to an unexpected source for help. Originally posted in September 1999.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not mine, just playing. Real life places, scientific journals, movies, sports teams and civic events used in a fictional way.  
> Someone once said that I ought to use my artistic license before it's revoked. So I have altered some minor facts of neurology and the dates of real-life events to suit my purposes. My purposes also require that "Biogenesis" take place in May. This story takes place in late June. Skilled, sensitive and spot-on beta by haphazard method and EPurSeMouve.

Alexandria, VA  
9:45 p.m.

               Screw the Knicks, anyway.

               The first time in five years they make a serious run for the title and they have to do it the summer I'm locked in a rubber room.

               Scully taped every one of the games for me, though, bless her uninterested little heart. We've got Game 3 in the VCR now, and even though my boys avoided the broom this time, I know that Cinderella has a big crack in her glass slipper.

               Better yet, bless Scully on general principles. She saved my life. She’s helping me piece back my sanity. Funny how busting me out has proven to be the simpler of the two tasks. I still can’t stand to be around too many people at once, even though it's been nearly a month, even though the voices are mute-

               "Mulder?"

               She's looking at me from the end of my couch, where she's sitting sideways, her toes tucked under my thigh, casefile propped up against bent legs, reading by the failing light of a long summer day. I realize I'm rubbing my temples and bring my hands down. One still holds the remote for the VCR.

               "Nothing, Scully," I tell her. "Habit."

               From the look she gives me, I can tell she doesn't believe it. She swings her feet to the floor, sets the file aside, and pats her lap. Gratefully, I rest my head on her thighs, sigh as I feel her gentle hands stroke my bristly crewcut...

_... as I wake to the familiar sound of an electric razor, feel its unmistakable burr on my head, feel more needles slide into my arm, my scalp before I'm awake enough to resist or to hear oh God no no not that not like Gibson Gibson was awake for *that*? And I try to scream to fight but I can’t they’ve paralyzed me somehow oh God no no please anything not that shoving me into a chair clamps on my head the feel of my bare scalp parting like a zipper the smell of smoke you're letting that fucker *smoke* in here? God no stop please the sound of a saw an electric saw ..._

               The sobs well up without warning. I turn so that my face is half-buried in her lap, and the terror washes over me once more. Distantly, I hear the low murmuring of the post-game show click off. The remembered sound of the saw the saw they would have used to cut my skull open had not Scully arrived at that moment -- still buzzes in my brain. Scully hunches over me, gathers me into her arms as best she can.

               I would be dead without her.

               * * *

               When I finally open my eyes again, the apartment is dark. Soft lips press just above my left ear. "You're doing better, Mulder," Scully whispers, her mouth forming a small smile against my cropped hair. "That one only lasted about half an hour."

               A few cracks about length and stamina and endurance cross my raw and bleeding mind, but I'm too exhausted to organize them into a sentence. "Stop keeping score, Scully. I've already done the lab rat thing."

               "Sorry." She kisses me again and sits up. I know her. She'll still keep track, but she'll keep the results to herself. There's a lot she's still keeping to herself -- to protect me, I think, the way I used to protect her from things I thought she didn't need to know.

               I would smile at the irony of that, except that I think I do need that protection.

               She's tracing her fingertips up and down my spine, soothing me. I close my eyes, marveling at her touch. Some days it’s all that holds me together.

               Last week she thought I was ready for “The Phantom Menace" -- she knew I’d wanted to go on Opening Day. I missed that, too. But even though she took every precaution to minimize contact with people -- an early afternoon show,on a weekday, even bypassing the comfortable new theater near my apartment at Potomac Yards for an older, less popular one in Arlington I didn't even make it to the pod race.

               The theater was only half full, but that was still too many people. I couldn’t hear them, but I could feel the weight of their thoughts pressing against my mind and the weight of all the people in the nearby office towers and government buildings and even the jail across the street and I couldn’t hear them but I felt like I was about to --

               I barely made it to her car before I broke down. Scully found me huddled on the pavement near the open door to her passenger seat, the awful sounds I was making echoing through the parking garage.

               "It's all right, Mulder. Nobody likes this movie the first time they see it. And Jar Jar does grow on you."

               In spite of myself, I laughed through my terror, and then I cried into her shoulder for a good hour anyhow.

               "Mulder. Mulder, look at me."

               I shift so that the back of my headrests on her thighs. Paradise is only a few centimeters to my left, but that’s out of the question as well. We’ve tried. I can't. We'd only had a few nights together before this happened, starting with one glorious evening of batting practice; we rounded second on the field and completed the play at home. Making love was a new and wondrous experience for us then, would be that way still except that now I carry memories of trauma so close to the surface that any strong emotion, good or bad, brings the fear bubbling up every time. I can't suppress it, no matter how I try.

               In a way, they've taken Scully from me again.

               She turns on the reading lamp next to the couch, and I blink against the light as it hits my eyes. "Mulder," she says. "It's not going to happen again. I've made sure of that. You're safe now."

               How can you be so sure? I wonder, but there’s a thread of steel in her voice that makes me believe. She's done something. She knows something. She radiates something new.

               Power.

               Somehow Scully won this battle, and with it, brought us a step closer to winning the war. I don't know how. I’ll find out eventually.

               My Scully, large and in charge.

               She smiles at me, and I realize I’ve been glowing up at her. We stay like that for a while, taking nourishment from each other's gaze. She slips one hand into mine, entwining her fingers with mine. "Want to watch the next game?"

               I shake my head, my hair whispering against her khaki pants. "I know who wins."

               For a moment, I almost hear her thinking: How did you know that? I didn’t tell you. The terror threatens again, but I manage to calm myself before she notices. This is Scully.

               I've always known how she thinks. It’s okay.

               "One of the orderlies was a Spurs fan. He'd just won a couple hundred bucks in the hospital pool," I tell her, and feel her relax. "He was so pleased with himself that he was gloating to everyone. Even me."

               Her lips twitch, but she doesn't really smile. Her gaze drifts far away. I twist and glance at the clock on my desk -- getting near 10. She's probably thinking about her next steps, about whatever it is she's been reading in that unlabeled case file. Late at night is when she does her work. I fall asleep every night listening to her quiet murmurs on the newly secure phone the Gunmen rigged for her, to the gentle clack of computer keys as she searches and chats. So much better than my first few days free, when she was rarely around, when I felt like I was going to die from the twin onslaughts of drug withdrawal and the still present ability to read others' thoughts. I almost hated her then, for abandoning me. Now I am grateful that she’s here, that she's still focused on saving me.

               When she's working, the apartment takes on the thrum and energy of a fully staffed command center. A war room.

               When she's done, she slips into my bed and lets me feed off that energy, a recharger for my leaking mental battery. We wake with me wrapped so tightly around her that it couldn’t possibly be comfortable. Beyond spooning. More of a weld, I think.

               We are quiet for a while. I can hear traffic from the street below, the last flights approaching National for the night, the faint murmur of my neighbor’s television, the ding of the elevator arriving down the hall.

               Scully's breathing.

               Nothing else. Thank God. Although the fear that the silenced voices will return fills my every waking moment and a few of my sleeping ones, I am slowly making up my mind that I want to know how Scully did it, how she switched those terrible voices off.

               Silence. I'd missed that. I luxuriate in it, watching Scully's face. She’s far away, thinking. I want her back. It takes every ounce of energy I've got left, but I sit up, and maneuver her so that her back is against my chest. Her shoulders are halfway to her ears, and they feel like stone. I'm so tired, but I can at least rub her neck for her.

               "Hey, Scully?"

               "Yeah, Mulder?"

               "Why is it that when I go to the ends of the earth for you, I wind up at the South Pole, and when you go to the ends of the earth for me, you get to go to the beach?"

               "Well, it wasn't any fun," she informs me primly, striking precisely the right note. "I got sunburned."

               "I got frostbite." I slip my thumbs under the chain of her crucifix, knead the base of her neck, avoiding her scar. Her head lolls to one side.

               "You weren't alone." Her voice changes, blurs, as my hands move outside her shirt and down her back.

               "You were unconscious." My fingers accidentally brush the extreme outer edges of her breasts through her shirt, and she gasps with unexpected, unmistakable pleasure. Dangerous territory. I pull back, focus again on those taut shoulders.

               Her eyes close as I work out the knots, and she lets her head fall back onto my chest. Conscious thought is clearly fleeing her mind, but she valiantly tries to keep playing the game. "At least this time I got to see the --"

               She cuts herself off, her eyes snapping open, as if she's said too much.

               I freeze.

               "The what, Scully?"

               She licks her bottom lip, won't look at me.

               "The *what*, Scully?" Suddenly I’m kneeling on the couch next to her, spinning her around to face me. My hands close tight around her upper arms. She still won't meet my eyes. "The *spaceship*?"

               She swallows hard. "You're not ready to hear all this, Mulder."

               "The *spaceship*??" It's the voice I use to hector doctors, to interrogate suspects, to harangue review boards.

               She knows it, and it makes her angry.

               "A craft of undetermined origin."

               My need for information, no matter how damaging, overrides every rational thought I'd had earlier about needing her protection. "How could you keep something that important from me? You should have told me!"

               "When?" Her eyes flash and flare at me. "When you were going through barbiturate withdrawal at the Gunmen’s or during the five minutes you have between crying jags?"

               I suck in my breath, her words slicing through me. And I'm casting about for a response when the first explosion hits.

               Instinctively I grab Scully, throw her face down on the couch, fling myself over her as she gasps in surprise.  A second explosion, and I clutch at her, moaning in fear. She's wriggling underneath me, calling my name and something more. I'm too far gone to hear her, too busy praying I can protect her to listen.

               A sharp elbow in the ribs clears some of the confusion from my head.

               "Mulder!" Scully shouts. "Fireworks! The waterfront festival! Remember?"

               Oh, God. Oh, my God. She's right. Less than two miles away, tens of thousands of heat-stroked, half-drunk revelers are taking part in a summertime tradition that's been going on as long as I've lived here. And as soon as I think about all those people, I begin to feel the pressure again. Scully maneuvers under me so that we're face to face. I'm way beyond smart comments-- I just collapse on top of her and break down again. Her arms snake around my neck and hold me tight.

               "Oh, Mulder," she sighs in my ear.

               "We've got to find a way to stop this."

               All I can do is nod helplessly, shuddering against her with the force of my out-of-control emotions.

               * * *

               Eventually Scully puts me to bed, helping me out of my sweatpants, finding a new T-shirt to replace the one I'd used as a handkerchief. She kneels at my side, brushing her fingers over my hair in a way that had always given me pleasant shivers before.

               Before. Before.

               I'd always been so resilient before. Hypothermia, gunshot wounds, beatings, alien retroviruses, you name it, I’ve recovered from it.

               Why can't I recover from this?

               "Mulder," Scully whispers, pauses. "I’m sorry -- what I said --"

               Control. Come on, Mulder, you can do this. I stop the rest of her sentence with fingertips that tremble only slightly. "Don't. I'm fine." She recognizes this for the lie that it is, but accepts it at face value, the way I always did with her. "Now get to work. I can't sleep unless I hear you working."

               Under my fingers I feel her almost smile. She takes my hand and kisses my palm. I let my eyes drift shut, and I try not to think about crafts of undetermined origin. Her mouth moves against my palm again, but it's not a kiss. She's whispering something. Odd.

               "What is it, Scully?" I ask.

               I get a soft, almost bashful look.

               "'Protect him, God, and keep him safe,'" she says. "I ask that for you every night."

               Under normal circumstances, I would have snorted, would have teased her about turning to faux talismen, would have scoffed at the one thing she’ll believe in without proof. Tonight, I am stunned that she even admitted it to me, and touched beyond words.

               Man, I am messed up.

               "Get some rest, Mulder," she murmurs.

               "I love you."

               With that final benediction, I sleep.

               * * *

               The change in her voice is what wakes me later. It's Dana I hear, not Agent Scully, not even Scully.

               "I thought so, but now I'm not so sure. No, just twice. But -- Exactly. I don’t know if it's coming back, or if he’s just afraid it will."

               I don't know either, Scully. Are you telling this to someone who can help me?

               She listens for a while, and when she speaks, her voice is low, anguished, shocking. I've never heard her like this.

               "He's starting to scare me, Byers."

               My mind goes white with fear.

               "Yeah, I've thought about that, too. No, you guys did everything you could. You did great." Silence. I am paralyzed, listening. "Yeah, I think so. I'll call him in the morning. All right then, if you want to get technical, when the sun comes up. Goodnight, Byers."

               She hangs up. I wait for her to dial again, to type some more, but instead I hear the unmistakable electronic whine of a Windows shutdown. The faint light from the living room dims further as she turns off the monitor. And then there is another, muffled sound that only adds to my fear.

               I've seen Scully sob in relief, I’ve seen her silently spill over with emotion, but I've never heard this quiet, desperate weeping before. I have the awful feeling that this isn't new for her, that it's just the first time I’ve overheard her.

              _Yeah, I've thought about that, too._

              The echo of her words sends a chill through me. I can't imagine -- I don’t want to know. This is just a particularly bad case of post-traumatic stress syndrome.

               Isn't it?

               I start to shake, and I curl up under the covers like a waterbug that's been poked. But I can't cry this time. I won’t. Not when Scully's upset. Be strong for her, be calm for her. Let her have her moment. I would say that I couldn’t imagine what this is like for her, except that I can -- I lived through her cancer. I remember putting on the brave face, smiling and saying reassuring things when all I wanted to do was dissolve in grief. I remember the desperation and the need to do something to help. And I remember one terrible night at her bedside, when I thought I'd run out of answers, sobbing silently for the woman I loved.

               Dammit, I'm going to do it again.

               * * *

               I don't know if she ever came to bed; she’s not there when I wake up.

               Fighting a surge of panic -- she *does* occasionally get up before I do -- I sit up to regain my bearings. Someone’s here ...

               ... but it's not Scully.

               The footsteps I hear in the kitchen are heavier, there's soft music coming from the stereo in my living room instead of NPR, there's no smell of coffee filling my apartment. She always makes coffee in the morning. Quietly I slide open the drawer of my nightstand, pull out the gun Scully forbade me to use after a couple of episodes where she says she found me just staring into space, a blank slate. I don't remember doing that, and I talked her into reluctantly giving me access to my weapon for emergencies. Looks like I was right.

               The gun feels heavy and cool in my hand. I missed it.

               Barefoot, wearing only the T-shirt and boxers I slept in, I pad to the door of my room, gun held ready at my ear. I’m on automatic, full federal agent mode, and as I sneak to my kitchen, I feelgood.

               I feel normal.

               "Freeze!" I shout and point my gun at the man in my kitchen.

               There's a crash, and an oath, and Byers spins to glare at me.

               "Jesus, Mulder!"

               "Byers!" I'm almost disappointed.

               Shooting one of those bastards would have really hit the spot. I lower the gun. "Where's Scully?"

               "She had some -- business to attend to."

               He's down on the floor picking up the shattered pieces of the mug he dropped.

               I catch his hesitation, and get the feeling he's glad he has somewhere else to look besides at me. _Byers, it’s Byers, you know him too. You're not reading his mind_. I rub the heel of my hand from the bridge of my nose to my hairline, find a chair and sit heavily down, sliding the gun away from me on my table.

               Byers dumps the shards of mug into the trash. I pre-empt his question. He doesn’t have the best poker face. "I’m fine." He looks worried. I ignore it. "So you pulled baby-sitting duty?"

               "Babysitters get paid better than this." The teakettle whistles, and he plucks it off the stove to prepare the tea. "Want some?"

               "Tea's a girly drink, Byers." It's his turn to ignore me. Langly gives him shit on this particular subject constantly. "I see you got the memo on casual Friday."

               Confused, he glances down at himself while I get up to get myself some orange juice. His coat and vest are hanging over the back of one of my kitchen chairs -- he has rolled back his sleeves and loosened his tie. After a second, he gets it.

               "It's Saturday, Mulder. You know, I don’t have to stay."

               "Oh, yes, you do, or Scully will kick your ass again."

               Byers actually pales. Goddamn, this feels good, ribbing the poor guy the way I used to. Did Scully slip me something before she left? This can’t possibly last. Yet I still feel like doing a little victory dance and upending my jug of Sunny D onto Byers' head. Put that down in your little notes, man, and take it back to the Ubercommander. I'm fucking *fine*.

               And then I see it on the counter next to Byers' cooling mug of tea.

               The unmarked file.

               _A craft of undetermined origin._

               It looks thicker than the night before.

               I glance up to meet Byers' eyes to find a cautious, worried gaze that I've seen only in times of great stress ... or danger.

               Without taking his eyes off me, Byers puts his fingertips on the file and slides it towards me. My legs feel like jelly, and I have to lean against the counter. "I'm guessing that's not the breakfast menu," I tell him.

               Byers' expression doesn't change.

               Scully would at least have given me the courtesy of a raised eyebrow. "Agent Scully and I talked about it this morning, and we agreed it's time you got the overview."

              _He's starting to scare me, too_.

               Neither of us says anything for a minute. The music-you-can-listen-to-at work that Byers inexplicably likes filters in from the living room. The refrigerator hums behind me, like the unheard thoughts of my neighbors. It’s hard to breathe. Everything I ever wanted, or nothing I really need to know. The truth, versus my sanity. This is not as easy a call as I thought it would be.

               "Can't you just read me the good parts?"

               "No, you should read it for yourself."

               By myself is more like it. I don’t think so. "Byers, tell me where Scully is." I am ashamed at how shaky my voice suddenly sounds.

               "I can't, Mulder." He tries to smile.

               "I still haven't paid off my Vegas debt."

               This is absurd. "Who died and made Scully queen, huh?" I shout, temper flaring out of nowhere, out of fear.

               "Who are you loyal to, anyway, her or --" Me, I was going to say, but the flashback smacks me right back into captivity, and I'm shouting those exact words at -- Diana? Skinner? Someone I know -- and my hands are at my temples again and I'm sitting in a ball on my kitchen floor trying to squeeze out the memories, concentrating. Concentrating.

               Not in front of Byers. Not in front of Byers. Not again.

               "Mulder?" he says uncertainly.

               I manage to hold myself mostly together. "Give me a minute here," I choke out, my face buried in my knees. And he does. I hear him slowly backing away. "I think I’d rather shower and get some breakfast before I start reading that file, okay?"

               "Okay." He slips away before I crack.

               Scully, I think, rocking back and forth on the floor, my arms wrapped around my shins. Scully, come home.

               Once, just once, I want to hear a voice in my head.

               Why couldn't the damn God module have come with a transmit function?

               * * *

               This is the fourth time I've read the file through.

               It's hard to believe Scully wrote this.

               How many times have I heard her arguments against just this possibility?

              _Logically, I would have to say no._

_The very idea of intelligent alien life is not only astronomically improbable but at its most basic level downright anti-Darwinian._

_That is science fiction. It doesn’t hold a drop of water._

               Guess this one bit her in the ass.

               That's not fair. I rub my hands over what hair I have left. Christ, it’s cold in here. Byers must have cranked up the a/c when I was reading this ... this ... *This*. He's in my living room, on the phone with Langly about story placement and headline size and jumps. Must be deadline time at Lone Gunman Publications. Life goes on.

               It's cold in here, but I'm sweating.

               Scully wrote this. I recognize her voice. Crisp and clear, even with the medico-legal jargon she's forced to use in the reports we write for the Bureau.

               She lays out her findings as if she were writing for the New England Journal of Medicine. Abstract, methods, results, discussion, references. Evidence so good that neither a panel of scientists peer-reviewing it before publication nor Johnnie fucking Cochran could poke holes in it. She couldn’t even poke holes in it, and it reads as though she tried awfully hard.

               "Based on the evidence, we conclude that the structure is made of materials unrecognizable to experts in metallurgy, chemistry, polymer and plastics technology and avionics, and that we must begin to consider the possibility that the structure originated from an extraterrestrial location."

               It's cold, and I'm sweating. I standup. I pace around the kitchen. I sit down. I get up. I'm shaking, but I walk in circles. I can't stop moving.

               The file, for all its size, is not complete. There's nothing in it about me. There are no photos of the artifact. There's no indication of what Scully’s working on now.

               Scully. She --

               I can't say it. The thought is too enormous.

               For me, too simple. Another theory I’d willingly absorb as easily as last night’s box scores. I accept, and Scully disproves, or at least makes me prove. I've bought into stranger ideas before breakfast. But she doesn't. She never -- that's how I knew I was hallucinating in North Carolina a few weeks ago. Scully believed.

               Scully believes.

               She *believes.*

               The tectonic plates of my worldview shift beneath my feet. I am Pangaea, shattering into pieces.

               Who's going to tell me I'm crazy now? I need someone who'll tell me I'm crazy.

               I sink into a chair, my fingers pressing into my temples again. This is. It's. Too much. Proof. Belief. Support. I'm not used to having that.

               Voices. Murmuring, whispering.

               Oh, God, no, not now, don't let it start again.

               My feet make the decision my mind cannot, and I flee.

               The heat outside my apartment hits me like a hot, sodden blanket. The air is too thick and dirty to breathe. But Irun anyway. I have no idea if Byers noticed, I don't know if there are enemies lying in wait for me, I don’t care.

               I just run.

               Past the half-million dollar townhouses, past half a dozen Robert E. Lee memorials, through the tourists clogging the sidewalk outside Ben &Jerry's. I nearly knock over an overweight cyclist who can't get his foot into his toeclip, and I don’t care. I've got to run. Away? Towards something? I don't know. Voices. Again. People everywhere, brought to you by the alien culture that my skeptical partner unexpectedly believes in.

               I'm soaked with sweat and maybe with tears and my chest hurts and I stop, bending over to catch my breath, my hands on my knees. Praying I just look like a guy who's stupid enough to go out for an innocent run in the midst of a Code Red ozone alert, I crouch there for a minute and let the tears flow.

               And as I do, as people bump into me and apologize, my surroundings begin to come into focus. People, sounds, voices, everywhere - because I’ve plunged myself into the middle of the waterfront festival.

               Oh, Christ, what have I done? I feel dizzy, and it's not entirely from the heat. How the hell did I - I'm at least two miles from home, and I'm too exhausted and hot to walk back. No wallet, no cell phone. Lord only knows where the nearest pay phone is. All these people - my hands go automatically to my temples. Not now.

               Please leave me alone, please stay away...

               My chest grows even tighter, and I whirl about, searching for a space where I can't be surrounded. I know this park, I've run through it a million times and today somehow I can’t get my bearings on where I am. There are too many people. The weight of their unheard thoughts is crushing. Not knowing what else to do, I edge away from what I think is the core of the crowd. Alone, God, I'm so alone - and then I simultaneously slip on something and catch a noseful of dead fish and sewage. The river. The sluggish, brackish, evaporating Potomac. Yes. Sit by the river and they can't surround me. Yes.

               Stumbling a little - maybe it is the heat, or maybe the roots sticking out of the desiccated earth - I find a riverside tree that miraculously no one has claimed and stake out territory underneath it. The bass thud of the oldies band on the stage a few hundred feet away reverberates in my aching chest. Somebody's got a churros booth nearby, and the smell of the frying dough makes me nauseous. That's just what I need, to get sick. People are going to notice*that.*

               Oh, Scully, where are you? Come and get me, please, now, I need you. I won't be able to do this alone for long...

         _Protect him, God, and keep him safe_.

              The words resonate so strongly in my head that I shudder with both relief and fear, and I actually look up to see if she's nearby. No. No mind reading. Just a memory, a selective spark of a synapse. My brain speaks fluent Scully.

               That little mantra is something she’d probably be thinking now, I hope, something that would help her stay calm as she searches for me.

               Someone tosses a beer cup onto the precarious stack of garbage spilling out of the trash can a few feet away, and I start at the sound. Too close.

               People coming too close.

               I put my head down on my knees and hug my shins tightly, and I plead with Scully’s God to help me through this, to keep these people's thoughts away from me, to keep me together until she finds me.

               She'll find me.

               * * *

               end 1/3

            

              


	2. Chapter 2

Time passes, although I couldn't tell you how much. The bands change, once, twice, I lose track. The noise of the crowd ebbs and flows. The psychologist part of my brain whispers to me, "Fugue state," but the voice is soft and hard to hear. The internal alarm that sometimes takes on my partner's voice warns, "Heat stroke," but there’s nothing I can do about that, not without getting up and asking people for help. The shade protects me not at all - I can feel my scalp burning through the short, useless hair.  
I am about to offer up another plea to Scully’s God, the one I don't believe in, when I feel a change in the shade, sense behind my tightly closed eyes a decrease in the light. I turn my head just enough to crack open one eye.  
The cavalry has arrived.  
All I can see from this angle is a pair of bare knees I'd recognize anywhere; the left one still bears a healing scar on the outside of the kneecap from where she'd nicked herself shaving the other day. It must be awfully fucking hot if *she's* wearing shorts, I think dully.  
I hear the unmistakable rustle of aplastic grocery bag, and something moderately heavy hits the ground next to me. Scully just stands there.  
"Mulder. What the hell were you thinking?"  
She's angry and frightened and relieved all at once. I can hear it in her voice without looking at her. I twist my head again, so I can see more of her. Even in my haze I can see the strong emotions dancing just below the surface of her face. Something clicks in my head, a relay connects, and I'm able to speak.  
"Awwww, Mom, you said I could play outside when I was done with Mr. Byers' homework."  
"Mulllllder." But I can hear that I’ve taken the edge off the situation. Guess I haven't completely lost my touch. In mock annoyance, she nudges my hip with the toe of a chunky black sandal - her Scientific Spice shoes, I called them once, and nearly caught one in the forehead for my trouble - and then crouches down beside me. I'd pick up my head to see her better, but I'm too woozy. Her fingertips burn on the back of my neck. She sighs. "I'm going to pour some water down your neck. It should help."  
It's not even cold - she must have just grabbed it from the soda aisle at the Giant - but it races down my back like an icy river, and I nearly jump to my feet from the shock. She cracks open a second bottle and does it again.  
"Drink this," she orders, and hands me another. I obey her.  
"God, Mulder, what were you thinking?" she says again, although even in my stupor I can tell she doesn't expect an answer. "All those drugs - we have no idea what they did to your body, your heart - " Her voice catches. My hand drifts to my chest. I'd thought that was just from the smog. "Monday we’re going to get you checked out."  
I shudder. The first time she suggested seeing a doctor, I'd panicked myself nearly into a seizure. But she's right. I've stalled this moment long enough.  
"Keep drinking," she says, and pours more water right over my head.  
We do this for a couple more minutes, until her six-pack is empty, and it dawns on me that what may have saved me from a full-scale freak-out this time was incipient heat stroke. It also dawns on me, once the wooziness clears enough for me to actually lift my head for more than a second, that Scully, as far as I can tell, is alone.  
"Where's Byers?"  
"Still at the apartment. He said he was on the phone when he heard the door slam, and you were gone."  
Byers. Dammit. There weren't any voices, it was Byers on the phone. I hate this. I'm sick of this. My eyes sting as if I'm going to cry again, but I’m too beat to even sob properly. A few meager tears leak out, and Scully touches one, tracing its path down my face.  
"How'd you find me?" I ask her weakly.  
She gives me an enigmatic smile. "I was psychic long before you were." While I gape at her, she stands, balances the empty water bottles on top of the trashcan, and extends a hand. "We need to get to the car."  
I let her pull me to my feet and lead me through the throngs. My brain has pretty much shut down, whether from the heat or the stress, it's hard to tell, and I'm actually able to ignore the thousands of minds around me. Instead, I just watch Scully, who's a step or two ahead of me although she's holding my hand. I can see the outline of a dark sleeveless T-shirt underneath her loose, open white blouse - I can also see the lump at the small of her back that is most likely her weapon. Her phone is at her hip, along with another gadget I don't recognize.  
We thread through the barricades into the restricted parking lot. Scully’s car is nestled between a brown sheriff’s car and a white city police car. A sweaty Alexandria cop tips his hat to us. "Looks like you got your man, Agent Scully."  
"Thank you so much for your help, Officer Moran." I swear she twinkles at him. "And thank you so much for keeping it quiet."  
The cop gives me a look filled with bathos and pity, an expression so appalling that it cuts through my mental murk. In the car, I immediately turn to Scully, baffled. "What the hell did you tell him?"  
Scully is intent on backing out and avoiding sunstroked drunks. She doesn’t look at me. "I told him that my mentally challenged cousin wandered off from the family picnic and that uniforms scared him."  
"Thanks a *lot.*"  
"I thought you'd appreciate having your name kept off the police scanner."  
That much is true. Scully maneuvers down Lee, back towards my apartment. She has fallen silent, and I recognize her mood: she's dying to dress me down for my stupidity, but her compassionate nature won't let her ream me out when I’m not 100 percent. St. Scully and Boss Scully are at war again. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be able to read her mind, I muse. At least then I'd get a heads up on which Scully to expect.  
While she decides who gets to speak, I pick up the mysterious gadget, which she’s stashed in the brake well between our seats. It looks for all the world like a GPS. My stomach sinks. "How *did* you find me, Scully?" I ask softly.  
She sighs. There's an uncomfortably long pause. "There's a transmitter in your left shoe, under the swoosh."  
"You *bugged* me? What the hell for?"  
She comes to a full stop at the sign instead of her usual rolling rationalization, and gives me the dirtiest Look I've ever seen. Oops, Boss Scully won. My brain chides my mouth for saying moronic things without consulting it first.  
"Gee, Mulder, why do you think -" she begins, but her phone rings, and I’m spared the rest of the lecture. "Scully. Hi, Frohike. No, I've got him. Except for a touch of heat stroke, I think he's fine. No," she says, a touch of marvel in her voice. "I don't think he did."  
I'm not sure I like the way she’s looking at me, as if her rat got to the end of the maze first. The car behind us beeps, and Scully accelerates. My stomach feels like it's been left in the back seat. There's a reason I do most of the driving.  
"Yes, the festival," she's saying. "Exactly. Looks like you did some good work today, Hickey." She chuckles, a low, throaty sound that is incredibly disturbing combined with her use of his new nickname. Another weird Vegas leftover. "No, *our* kung fu is the best. Tell Byers he's off the hook. Right."  
And she hangs up. All this talk of transmitters and kung fu - and I know what Frohike means by that; it's a hacker term - is making me very, very uneasy. So is Scully's silence. Even the voices would be welcome at this point.  
"Scully?"  
"Hmm?"  
I hesitate. "You are going to tell me the whole story, aren't you?"  
"When we get home," she answers absently, her attention appropriately focused on the tourists and cyclists drifting carelessly in and out of the street in front of us. I swallow hard, my shoulders tensing. No going back now. But then she sighs again. There’s something about her face. Her words from last night come back to me.  
"I scared you, didn't I?"  
No one else would notice the twitch of fear that passes across her impassive face. "Yes," she admits.  
My eyes fill, but I will them not to spill over. "I scare you, don't I?" I whisper.  
Another stop sign. My building is in sight. "Yes," she says.  
I reach for her hand, grasp it and hold, but I can't look at her. I need to prepare to hear the truth.  
* * *  
We are alone again, Byers and Frohike reassured that I'm all right then sent packing. The Ubercommander ordered me to take a shower while she dealt with her lieutenants, and when I'm done I find her waiting for me, sitting on my bed with her back against the headboard, knees drawn to her chest, bare unpolished toes pointed in my direction. I dig up a clean T-shirt and shorts, and dressed again, flop down across the foot of the bed on my back, one forearm covering my eyes as a shield.  
"Lay it on me," I tell her.  
She stretches out one foot and gently spreads her toes across my hip, a little caress. "Some of this might not be easy for you to hear."  
I squeeze her toes, then let go. "I know."  
"Okay." She draws back her foot. "Where do you want me to begin?"  
"Start with the kung fu."  
"Okay." She takes a breath. "You remember Chuck's assessment of the artifact - that it could be an example of a magic square, something that conferred power to the person whose name correlated to the numerical sequences within the square."  
"Right." I also remember the pain in my head from exposure to a mere photograph of a rubbing of the thing, and I squeeze my arm tighter over my eyes.  
"Dr. Sandoz discovered that the writing on it, in addition to the Genesis verses, contained genomic information. He was convinced that whoever created the artifact had unlocked the key to human life, had decoded the blueprint that makes us what we are."  
"Holy shit," I exclaim. My arm comes off my face, and I sit up. "Aliens know our genome? But they would, wouldn’t they, after all these years, after all those experiments - "  
Scully gives me a sad little smile, and I realize that I've reacted the way I would have ... before. And just as she would have before, she waves her hands in an effort to stop me. "Mulder, Mulder. As much as I enjoy having that particular argument with you, you’re off track." She holds up a hand before I can say anything else. "Sandoz thought the artifact contained *the*human genome, but he was wrong. The parts we found contained pieces of an individual genome. Yours."  
"What?" That wasn't what I expected.  
"How?"  
She shrugs. "Easy. You've had countless blood draws in countless hospitals across the country, you've had missing time, you've had your memory wiped, God only knows what they did to you in Russia. They could have gotten genetic material from you in any number of ways. For all I know, your father gave them a lock of your hair when you were born."  
That knocks me back. I can't say anything. I don't know what to say. My closed eyes sting. Not now. Not until she’s finished.  
"So," she continues, her soft voice acknowledging that her words had been rough, "Chuck and I figured that someone designed the artifact specifically to affect you."  
Part of me wants to make a joke - who are you, and what have you done with my partner? - but a much larger part of me is just plain gasping for air. This is crazy, this is nuts, I can't believe I’m hearing this -  
"I know," she says. "Feels odd on the other side of the fence, doesn't it?"  
"Hey, I'm the mind reader here," I grouse absently, still processing her information.  
"But it was the only conclusion we could draw based on the evidence. Circumstantial evidence, to be sure, but good enough to take it to a grand jury, if this were a normal crime."  
A million questions crowd my aching mind. The first one that pops out of my mouth is "Why?"  
"That we haven't quite figured out," she admits. "But their motive was far less important to me than finding a cure for you."  
Something catches in my throat, and emotion threatens again. Our roles have been well and truly reversed. I find myself hoping selfishly that she felt one-half this loved when I showed up in her hospital room with that chip from the Pentagon's basement.  
"So you smashed the damn thing to pieces and all is right with my mind."  
"Well, no." Her words make my heart lurch with fear. "I wanted to, Mulder, oh, God, how I wanted to. And I wanted to use CGB's head to do it, too. But what good would that have done? Who knows how many copies they have, how many rubbings, how many photos?"  
I feel sick.  
"So we, ah, overwrote the code."  
This takes a moment to settle in, and when it does, I feel even sicker.  
"You hacked my *brain*?"  
Scully winces. "I wouldn't put it*that* way. We found a way to neutralize the effects of the artifact that seems to have worked, and we went with it."  
"'We?'"  
"Frohike, Chuck and I. We did most of the work at Chuck's. We couldn't have copies of the artifact at the Gunmen’s while you were there."  
That explains why she hadn't always been around at the beginning. This is an explanation I can accept. Hell, it ‘smore explanation than she ever got from me.  
"We reworked the code a little bit today to make it more airtight," she’s saying. "It might have helped at the festival. Or you might just be getting over the fear."  
Or your God might just have heard me, I think, but I don't tell her that.  
Her eyes unexpectedly shift away from me. My throat tightens. "Scully -" I reach over and guide her chin so that she’s looking at me again. "You’re leaving something out. Don't leave anything out."  
Her eyelids flutter, and to my horror, her eyes well up.  
"Oh, my God, Scully, what?" My voice cracks. Something occurs to me, and my hand flies to the back of my neck. "They left something behind?"  
Shock crosses her face, as though this woman on a second chip of her own actually hadn't considered the possibility. Then she blinks and shakes her head. "No, Mulder. I looked. I know your scars. I saw nothing new. And your blood work in the hospital showed nothing I considered unusual."  
So I escaped Skinner's fate, then. "What, then?" My voice wobbles. Her eyes are still full.  
"I'm afraid -" And so am I, because that’s the second time today she’s admitted to an emotion she never admits she has - "I'm afraid the enhanced brain activity and the medications and the tests may have caused -" She stops, licks her lips, takes a breath. Her voice is very small. "Brain damage."  
Everything goes white and silent for a moment. Was this what it was like for her to hear the word "cancer"? She’s still talking - about having me tested, about finally taking me to a neurologist or two, how she should have done this before but I was in no mental shape - and her words slide past me like drops of rain down a windshield.  
Nothing sticks except those two words.  
I know enough about the functioning of the human brain to understand that this is a very real possibility, and I crumple into her lap. She folds over me, and I fall apart. "Oh, Mulder, no, we’ll fix it, I promise, I swear," she says, but her voice is clogged with tears and I can feel her ragged, frightened heartbeat against my back. I clutch at her arms; she presses her face into my shoulder blade. The sound of our combined terror and grief fills the room for some time.  
When I open my eyes again, the light has changed - the sun has moved around the building, no longer comes right into my bedroom. Scully's breath is still coming in little hitches, and her arms are still tight around me. Hard to tell if she's trying to comfort me, or to find solace herself. Either way, that contact is necessary - for both of us, I realize. I find the strength to turn and kiss the inside of her elbow.  
She presses a soft kiss into the back of my head. Without a word, we untangle ourselves and sit up. She quickly wipes her nose with the back of her hand, and raises her reddened eyes to meet mine.  
Her blue eyes darken slightly as we look at each other. Slowly I lower my mouth to hers, tasting the salt of her tears. For a long moment, we communicate only with lips and tongues and hands, the most basic form of communication there is. She's hesitant, though. I can tell from the way she holds herself in my arms, waiting for me to back down again as I've done before. But oh, I need this. Need her.  
My fingers find her necklace, trace the line the chain makes over her collarbone, gently grasp the dangling cross. Is this what's going to save me, Scully? I think, burying my face in the side of her neck. Or will you?  
"Scully," I beg hoarsely against her skin. "I need to feel normal again. Make me feel normal again."  
Her hands, tugging at the hem of my T-shirt, are all the answer I need.  
* * *  
end part 2/3


	3. Chapter 3

Ivory Coast  
Two weeks later

This is not the ocean I know.

My ocean is steel gray and icy and treacherous, sucking down desperate fishermen in storms, luring unsuspecting pilots to their deaths in the summer evening haze. It was a barrier to cross, something that set us apart from the mainland. Some thought of it as protection, but I never did, not after Samantha was taken.

But this is not my ocean. This is Scully's ocean.

I say this not because she sits here next to me on this outcropping of rock overlooking the smooth stretch of sand that leads to a sight I still have trouble comprehending - dozens of workers and armed men bustling around her craft of undetermined origin, carrying out her orders both scientific and strategic.

No, it's because I've seen the California Pacific, and most days it's everything Brian Wilson said it was warm and open and thrilling, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, a place where hopes and dreams could be fulfilled.

A place of possibility.

This is just the same.

The queen of this new kingdom surveys her domain. We look like a couple of wealthy tourists, I think - me in shorts, sandals, a polo shirt and dark glasses, she in a long-sleeved, anklelength sundress in deference to the Muslim men she's hired and a widebrimmed hat in deference to the sun. I can smell the tang of her sunscreen.

Yeah, just a couple of tourists, although one's commanding a small army to protect the most important archeological find in history and the other's buzzing along on a host of mood-altering, seizure-preventing, calm-inducing medications.

The team of friendly doctors she'd assembled with the aid of her oncologist, who'd seen enough strange stuff already with her to go with the flow when she asked him to help me, think everything might clear up in time. Then they turned around and put me on disability. I think I'd be angrier about what's happened to me if I wasn't so high. The emotion does still rise within me without warning the God module, it turns out, is close to the portion of the brain that controls emotion - but the drugs tamp it down to a less terrifying level.

Sometimes the wild emotion is even appropriate. I wept here, on these rocks, the first time I saw Scully's discovery, just as I'd wept in Antarctica.

But I still haven't gone down to see it up close. Zoloft can only keep a guy so calm.

The sun is warm on my head. I rub my hair, nearly back to normal length, and wish I'd brought a hat, too.

"You okay, Mulder?"

I nod. "A little muzzy-headed. It's just the drugs. I'm getting used to it."

Dr. Scully appears. She leans over, pulls off my sunglasses and looks into my eyes, then plops her hat on my head. For a small woman, she's got a big head - the fit is only a little tight.

"I don't think I look good in early Martha Stewart, Scully."

"I don't think you look good in a hospital, Mulder."

I hear the lilt in her voice that indicates a joke, but my reaction time is a bit slower than it used to be, and the moment passes before I can come up with a punch line. So instead, I slip my hand into hers, to let her know I understood. We sit quietly for a moment, watching the crew she's paying with the killing my stockbroker made on a couple of well-chosen IPO's. Apparently I'm the last person in America to make money off the Internet stock boom.

Scully was a very, very busy squirrel while I was locked away.

Her work has created a small miracle: for once, our evidence hasn't vanished. She's outspending what's left of the Consortium, treating her workers like kings instead of serfs. Their loyalty to her is breathtaking, especially on this corrupt continent. And she's found a way to protect our information until she's ready to present it in a scientific manner, a way that wasn't available to us when we began work on the X-Files:

We have a web site.

"Rob & Laura's UFO News!" has about 25,000 hits so far, and is mirrored at any number of wack job sites. It looks like a wack job site itself Webmaster Langly did a nice job peppering the heavily capitalized text with dancing aliens and exclamation points. But once you get past the loopy graphics and the blinding colors, everything Scully discovered is there.

I thought she was nuts when she told me what she'd done -- why not just put up a sign saying "Free evidence! Come and get it!" -- but ever the scientist, she came back at me with a peer-reviewed study from a respected journal that found that only 9 percent of all web pages are linked to a search engine.

They'll never find it, she said. And then she launched into a fabulously geeky speech about bots and logs and protected sites and the inefficiency of automated searches that lost me immediately but sparked two thoughts: 

_She's been spending way too much time with the Gunmen_

and

_I wonder how she'd look in black raccoon eye makeup and leather pants._

The upshot is, once I forced her to speak English again, is that we're hiding in plain sight.

The truth is out there.

Scully rests her folded arms on her bent knees, her chin on her forearms. Her gaze is very far away. I scratch her back lightly, just for the contact.

"Plotting our next move?"

"Writing my paper." She looks very much like she wants to purr. "I'm going to shoot for Nature, I think. Science got burned with the Mars rock, and I doubt they'll be receptive again, even if my evidence is far more conclusive than NASA's."

Science got burned? For a second, her words make no sense, but then I realize she means the journal, not the discipline. The surf crashes and roars over the sand and rocks below, temporarily filling my ears with white noise. Some twitchy part of my damaged brain wants to have a flashback; the drugs tell it to behave.

"This is what it sounded like, Scully,"

I tell her quietly. She tilts her head, considering. "I know you find the sea comforting," I continue. I need to make her understand. "But imagine the surf as voices, rising and falling, shutting out your own inner voice. Imagine not being able to get up and walk away from the sound." She's looking at me carefully, and I realize she's waiting for me to crack again. This is the sort of speech that would have triggered a crying jag a couple of weeks ago. I take one of her hands and kiss the back. "You've got me on some good shit, Scully. I'll be okay."

Her sad smile mirrors mine. I trace fingertips over her cheek, and she leans into my hand. "Mulder?" Her voice is surprisingly small, hesitant.

"Yeah?"

"Did you ever - could you -" She waves her hands suddenly, hoping to erase her words. "Forget it."

But I know what she's getting at. "No. Not directly." She looks relieved and disappointed all at the same time. She thinks she doesn't want to know. "I knew that you were concerned about my health, that you were very confused, that you were furious -"

_...Diana's face, the surprised O of her mouth matching the round red mark on her forehead as she fell backwards, her brains splattering against the front of CGB's smoke-stained jacket, against the side of my face as I sit locked in that chair, unable to move or to scream. Scully's bullet, I'm sure of it now..._

"Mulder??"

"I'm okay. Just - a memory." I blink it away. I'll dream about it later.

"So you never really -"

"Read your mind?" I finish for her.

There's a reason there's not much about me in her file. She can't prove what went on in my head. "I didn't learn anything I couldn't have figured out otherwise. Except that it felt great to hear you say you loved me."

She blushes. Scully still doesn't take direct declarations well.

"And that you couldn't think of a thing to wear in Africa."

"You -" She smacks me in the arm, anger and amusement warring on her face. "Son of a bitch. You *did* read my mind."

Ah. My timing isn't completely off. I grin wickedly at her, she settles down with a humph, and we go back to watching Dana's Militia.

Her faith in them is admirable, but I'm nervous about her reluctance to go officially public right now. I know how long it takes journals to peer review I'm afraid we may not have that much time. CNN's London phone number is in my wallet. They'd cover this. They put any old kind of shit on the air. Scully keeps telling me that we don't need to make that call, that there's no need to panic, and I believe her, but it's so hard.

I sigh. "Why aren't they coming to get us, Scully?"

"I don't know," she admits. "They know it's here, they'd have to, to plant the fake artifacts. My evidence is good, it hasn't been tampered with, but - maybe this isn't as important as we think it is."

That's - no. This is important. It has to be. Or the last seven years have been for nothing.

"Maybe they're trying to lull us into a false sense of security," I suggest.

"Oh, Mulder," she says wearily. "Take your victories where you can find them. We've preserved this evidence for nearly two months, we're in a place where we're safe ..."

"Safe?" I interrupt her. "How can you believe that?"

"Because I do, Mulder. We're meant to be safe here. This is not our time."

Goddamn, I hate when she does the believer thing. It scares the shit out of me. But at the same time, the serenity in her voice touches a button deep inside me, one that releases a little bit of calm. All the dope in the world can't take away the fear, although I will admit it dulls the edge quite nicely. She glances quickly at me, and opens her arms. I tumble into them, knocking off the silly hat in the process. She strokes my hair, the back of my neck.

"I know you're still afraid," she murmurs. "I don't blame you. It's hard to let go of something that big."

The words bubble out of me before I can stop them. "What if they come back to get me?"

Her silence is unnerving. I can feel her marshaling her thoughts, trying to figure out how best to put what she wants to say. "I think, if they had wanted you back, they would have taken you by now. I think they ... allowed me to keep you."

I squeeze my eyes shut against tears.

Her implication is that they'd damaged me and I am now useless to them. It is surprising how that hurts. Not surprising is the pain from her words, which echo something once told to me. Was it worse for you than it was for me, Scully, because you could see what they were doing to me, because you knew what was happening to me? I know how much worse the anguish and the anger I felt when you were taken would have been had I known the whole time what they were doing to you.

"How can you be so calm, Scully? You stealing my stash?"

She chuckles. "Faith, Mulder. You just have to have faith. Trust me on this."

I do trust her, implicitly, but faith?

Faith in some higher power to watch over us? I've always thought those people who said that God would provide were nuts - God's not an ATM or a grocery store - and I can't join those ranks. But . I did. I did, lost at the festival, frightened and alone, and I turned to Scully's God for help. And I was able to hang on until she found me.

It could have been a coincidence, it could have been whatever she and Frohike were doing with the artifact, but...

I catch one of her hands and hug it to my chest. The most extreme possibility of all is demanding that I consider it.

And I am taking the idea seriously.

"Hey, Scully?" I hesitate. Questioning her religion is never the smartest thing to do under the best of circumstances, and I hope she understands that I'm not trying to pick a fight. I don't have the mental energy for that. "What if what I said a long time ago was right - that this ship is the answer to everything, that we all came from aliens, that the extraterrestrials were responsible for us being here?"

"I would say first, that you're either trying to bait me, or you're still keeping score on how many times you've been right, and either would piss me off." Her voice is the one she uses for arguments over a case, and I feel oddly relieved. She pats the hand that's holding hers. "But if I decided that you meant the question seriously, you know what I'd say?"

I shake my head, because now I really don't know.

"That Somebody had to create the aliens. That Somebody had to come up with the question to which the aliens are the answer."

I turn so that I am once again laying on her lap, staring up at her in amazement. Usually this sort of brush with ET unnerves her so badly that she heads straight down the river called Denial, rather than risk giving any of it a thought. And that statement sounds like the product of an awful lot of thought. "Scully - " is all I can say, but there's a world of question behind it.

"I've come to the conclusion that it's all too elegant to happen by chance," she says softly, a sense of wonder creeping into her voice. "Look at the human body. So many complex functions, so many interdependent systems, all from one cell, nearly perfect nearly every time. How could that be random? Look at our genes. So many of them are identical to those found in the flatworm, or the fruit fly, or the chimpanzee. That can't be random. I used to think we got here by accident, by evolution, by chance, that the odds of it happening again somewhere else were beyond astronomical. But the more I think about it, the more I believe -"

My breath catches just to hear her say the word. She notices. "The more I believe that Someone's got to be behind it all."

"Someone who doesn't smoke, I hope."

"Mulder, you're going to burn in hell," she says mildly.

This conversation is making my head spin. I've never liked discussing religion with her. She's not rational about the fact that she takes so much of it on faith, and I can't help boiling down her Catholicism into a series of myths, symbols and terrific adventure stories. But there's something at the core of what she's saying, something I want to grab onto, something that's the cause of all this serenity I feel radiating from her.

Something I think I want to feel, too.

I sit up, and tug at Scully's arm until she figures out I want her to sit between my legs, her back to my chest. I am off-balance enough that I don't want to continue this conversation from a submissive position. My arms encircle her waist; her arms go over mine.

She leans forward a little to brush some sand off her dress, and her hair parts across her neck to reveal the tiny scar that marks the location of her chip. She doesn't like me to touch it, yet I can't stop looking at it. I remember that nasty scene in her hospital room as she and her doctor and the Scullys and I argued over which treatment route to take. I want to touch the scar, but I settle for tracing the skin around it instead. Her body is suddenly still.

"Do you ever wonder -" I hesitate again. This may be the first time I've ever asked her directly about her cancer. "Do you ever wonder what saved you?"

She takes a long, deep breath, her chest expanding and contracting under my arms. My heart is thudding against her back. She must feel that. "I don't know what did it," she finally says, then squeezes my hand. "Probably the chip. But who's to say? I was willing to try anything then, because I was so desperate, and there was so much faith around me. My doctor's faith in science, my mother's faith in God, your faith in me ... "

My faith in her. I swallow hard.

"Scully, at the festival, you know how I made it through before you found me?"

She shakes her head, then tilts it, curious.

"I asked your God for help," I say in her ear.

Scully twists to look at me, her mouth open. "You're kidding," she says after a second. And then she's on her knees between my legs, staring at me. The information makes its way into her brain, and as it soaks in, the shock on her face slowly evolves into wonder.

"Wow," she says. I've rendered her nearly speechless. I think I'm proud. "Wow. I'm seriously considering the possibility of extraterrestrial life and you believed in God for a second."

Her bald statement makes me squirm.

She's leaping farther than I think I've gone - but she's not entirely off track. "I don't know about that, Scully. If there is a God, wouldn't the Knicks have won the championship?"

"Sorry. He only pays attention to Notre Dame."

My eyebrow lift isn't half as evocative as hers, but she gets the picture. I take both her hands in mine, and stare at her until I see that mischievous twinkle turn serious. My heart is pounding. This is such ... alien ground for us.

"Does it help, Scully?" My voice catches.

She frees one of her hands and cups my cheek. Her eyes are the full rich blue of the sky above, warm and caring. "It can. Did it help you?"

I hadn't been calm, not by a long shot, but I remember suddenly not worrying about the voices any more. Not to the point of hysteria, anyway. "Yes."

"Then it helps."

The rhythmic sound of the surf fills my head, a susurration of sound that calms and gentles. I find myself breathing in time with the waves as they strike the sand, an elemental rhythm as basic as life itself. The usual barbed questions I throw at her during discussions like this still want to be asked; the impossible questions - if there is a God, why does He let these things happen to us - still beg to be answered. They'll have to wait.

"It takes time, doesn't it?" I ask her.

"Healing always takes time, Mulder," she says, an unexpected bit of ruefulness in her voice, as if she's reminding herself of something. She stands up, still holding my hand, and attempts to tug me to my feet. I resist her, tugging back playfully.

"Where are we going, Scully?"

She smiles. "I think it's time you got a closer look at the truth."

My brain spasms and lurches and tries to scream, no, don't go there, there might be more artifacts, I can't go down there. Terror tries desperately to override the drugs. At the same time, I find myself reaching out for that place where Scully is, that calm center, that place I went at the festival.

Protect me, God, and keep me safe.

"Okay," I tell her as I get to my feet.

"Let's go to the beach."

-30-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note #2:
> 
>  
> 
> _"Ours is an unpredictable world ... it is a place of many possibilities that are influenced by forces beyond our control and, in some cases at least, beyond our immediate comprehension. Ours is a less certain world than we thought it was, but it is also more interesting for that."_
> 
>  
> 
> \--Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, "The Sixth Extinction."
> 
> A small nod to my amused and tolerant husband, who delivered the original fabulously geeky speech.


End file.
